2015 George Meyer Award Proposal - AKA


The AKA has been around over fifty years and was created to disseminate information about killifish and has led the way and enabled the creation of other national clubs and in other countries.

Technology has advanced tremendously since then but no national club has really exploded this to it's full potential. As the environment dwindles every year perhaps it might be prudent for a global effort to apply the technology fully for the express purpose of disseminating killifish information.

If the AKA were to endorse and fund this effort it can lead the way once again and through international cooperation make all the worlds killifish material available worldwide every language.

This proposal outlines the four products that would be the deliverables of such an effort.

Catalog

Annotate Eshemeter's Catalog of Fishes

A 20 year project, Bill Eshemeyers Catalog of fishes is the sole authoritative list of all fishes living and extinct done in the manner of ROTOW. What it lacks is photos. We can fix that.

Docs

Put the worlds killifish inforamation from various national clubs online

Huber once remarked he'd rather see scientific articles in TFH than organization publications because at least you can find back issues of TFH. This stings a little, but he's right. What would help it so put all organization publications online in a coherent manner. This can be done for all national clubs and furthermore than can be automatically translated into all languages.

Census

Who has what? When did such and such disappear from the hobby

How do you tell if there are only 5 fish left of a species. We see countless times fish being introduced as new and rare then become popular and common, then people lose interest and in many cases the fish becomes extinct in the hobby. You can't manage what you don't measute ansd while the idea of a censis does not meet with uninversal approval it can be used

Shows

veocity of information

The show results and photographs of entries are one of the most important metrics we have for the global availability an health of the captive killifish populations. publication of this data varies worldwide and there are only spotty and volunteer efforts to capture images of worldwide entries. If this were to be rectified it would not only increase our understanding of what species are at risk but would almost certainly bolster enthusiasm and awareness thus increasing quality and walnut f killifans worldwide. Many many aquariums still have no idea what a killifish is.

National clu resources are spread pretty thin dong the excellent job these clubs already do and it may be prudent for na outside independent organization to assume that role for the benefit of national organizations and killifans worldwide.

Besides a coherent presentation of show results a two dimension graph of all species and shows can be produced.


Unlike local, regional and national clubs this proposed organization will have no members and no dues and will not compete in any way with any killi club, rather, it will serve as a source of common infrastructure and produce resources that can be used by any national club for the benefit of all killifans worldwide. As such it will rely on donations and will never impose a fee for production and operation of these resources.